Paper - Foundation Coalition

BRENDA BRIDGES - 2002-Jun-07_Stern_and_Pimmel_paper.doc Page 6
Session
that he or she is acting ethically in various professional
situations.
3) List resources that an engineer can consult if he or she has
questions concerning professional ethics.
The first question, specifically left open-ended, was
designed primarily to assess our success in achieving
Objective #1, and the second question was designed to
assess achievement of Objective #6. The post-test was
administered unannounced during a class period two days
after completion of the ethics module. Fourteen students
took both the pre-module and post-module tests.
The tests were graded by a third party, with the pre- and
post-module tests intermixed to remove any grading bias (our
identifying mark was not visible to the grader). We
instructed the grader to examine the responses to the first
question and to determine which of the four responsibilities
(society, employer, others, and self) were addressed in the
student’s answer. For the second question, we asked the
grader to identify the number of separate resources listed
and categorize as zero, one, two, or more than two.
Evaluation of the first test question is shown in Table 3.
The module significantly increased recognition of
responsibilities to others and moderately increased
recognition of responsibilities to society and to self.
Recognition of responsibility to an employer was slightly
reduced – the authors believe this may be due to the
emphases in the case studies. To address this issue, the
questions in the Ford Pinto case (and the instructor’s guide)
are being modified to further stress the engineer’s
responsibility to try to resolve ethical issues within the
company internally before whistleblowing. Table 3 can also
be interpreted to show that after taking the module the
students better understand the concept of ethical problems
arising from conflicting responsibilities – pre-module
answers listed an average of 2.07 competing responsibilities,
while post-module answers listed an average of 2.57
competing responsibilities.
TABLE 3. PRE- AND POST-MODULE IDENTIFICATION OF
CONFLICTING RESPONSIBILITIES
Responsibility
Society Employer Others Self
Pre-module 8 9 3 9
Post-module 10 7 8 11
Difference +2 -2 +5 +2
Table 4 shows the number of separate resources the
students were able to identify for help in resolving ethical
issues. Prior to the module, 28% of the students were only
able to identify a single resource, but after the module 93%
were able to identify three or more resources. We believe
that Table 4 shows positive achievement of Objective #6.
TABLE 4. PRE- AND POST-MODULE LISTING OF HELPFUL
RESOURCES
No. of Resources
More
than 2
Identified 0 1 2
Pre-module 0 4 1 9
Post-module 0 0 1 13
Conclusions
We have developed a short, 3-class-hour module for
engineering ethics which can be integrated into a standard
technical course. The module, which includes case studies
and the development of a code of ethics, uses cooperative
and interactive learning techniques and effectively
introduces the need for engineering ethics, the key
components in an engineering code of ethics, and resources
available to help resolve ethical issues. The module includes
an instructor’s guide, which provides objectives, outlines for
each class, in-class exercises, assignments, assessment
guidelines, and techniques for bridging the material into
specific engineering disciplines.
Test data shows that after taking the module, students
are more capable of stating the key components of an
engineering code of ethics and are more knowledgeable
concerning resources available for resolving ethical
dilemmas. Testing also shows that the students are aware of
the issues involved with engineering ethics and have
increased confidence in their ability to address ethical
conflicts in their professional practice.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Engineering Education
Program of the National Science Foundation under Award
Number EEC-9802942. We thank Lee Stern for grading the
competency tests and are also grateful for the reviewers’
helpful comments.
References
Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology, Inc.,
“Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs”, effective for
evaluations during the 2000-2001 accreditation cycle,
November 1, 1999.
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www.mojones.com/mother_jones/SO77/dowie.html.
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Tulsky, Fredric, “Shades of Pinto”, Mother Jones, 1994,
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JF94/tulsky.html
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, “Wernher von Braun”,
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/Academy/History/vonBraun/vonBraun.html
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von Braun,
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Stahlbrandt, Bo, “The V2”, 1999,
http://stahlbrandt.com/html/history/v1_v2_technical.html
0-7803-7444-4/02/$17.00 © 2002 IEEE November 6 - 9, 2002, Boston, MA
32 nd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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